


half a kingdom and a princess

by honey_wheeler



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, R plus L equals J
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-31
Updated: 2013-12-31
Packaged: 2018-01-06 23:51:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1112978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honey_wheeler/pseuds/honey_wheeler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Guess you’re stuck with me, old girl.”</p><p>Old girl. He’s never called her that before. He’s never called her anything but Sansa and my lady, or sometimes Lady Stark, a title that gives them both discomfort as Lady Stark is still Sansa’s mother to each of them. Something in Sansa thrills at the strange endearment, though she should – and may – protest at being called such a thing. There’s just something so familiar in the words, in Jon’s soft affection as he says them. Something intimate and real.</p>
            </blockquote>





	half a kingdom and a princess

The message comes on a summer day, an elegantly lettered parchment from Highgarden announcing Willas Tyrell’s impending wedding. Later, Sansa will think that it’s appropriate; Willas had represented summer to her during those dark days in King’s Landing, her one chance at escape and happiness. She had escaped without him – and she likes to think that her marriage with Jon is a happy one, as fledgling and tentative as it may be – but still the news of his marriage gives Sansa a curious pang. How long ago those days seem, though truthfully it was only a matter of years, scarcely more than she could count on one hand, no matter that it seems a lifetime ago.

“To whom will he be wed?” Jon asks when she tells him of the announcement.

“Some Redwyne or another,” she answers, setting the message down and perching on the edge of his rather cluttered writing desk. Jon Snow serves ably and dutifully as Lord of Winterfell, Sansa thinks as she tidies a stack of accounts with a smile, but not especially neatly. He pushes his chair back and drags both hands through his unruly hair with a heavy sigh. “A cousin, I believe.”

“You’d think if they were going to marry him within the family they’d have done it ages ago,” he says absently, stretching his legs before him, one knee bumping Sansa’s dangling foot. She nudges back with her toe and his knee bumps her again, deliberately this time, a faint grin on Jon’s face as he looks up at her. Sansa both loves and is wary of such moments. He seems so like the Jon she knew as her half-brother when he teases her playfully. It’s a bittersweet reminder, one that makes it a bit strange to look upon him now as her husband, though the strangeness of it fades with each day of their marriage. Or more accurately, each night. Thankfully there is little that makes her remember Jon as her once-brother in their marriage bed. At first, they’d coupled only to make an heir, their touches gentle and polite and hesitant. Now, after so many moons, there’s pleasure as well, enough that Sansa thinks perhaps Jon no longer comes to her chambers with the purpose of conceiving an heir alone. The thought pleases her; there’s still enough of the romantic girl left in her, she supposes, though life did its best to stamp that girl out of existence. The marriage of Sansa’s mother and father had grown into love. Perhaps Sansa’s will as well.

“Not enough political advantage, I suppose,” she says, drawing her mind back to Willas Tyrell and his future bride. “They were too busy attempting to wed him to hostage girls of Winterfell and the like.” Sansa tries to keep her voice light and mostly succeeds. The sting has lessened over the years, but it has never quite gone away. Even then she had some idea of the political advantage that the Tyrells had hoped to gain, though it had been buried under her girlish ideas of love and safety, under her desperation to be free of the Lannisters. Now she is able to look at it with a detachment that falls short of bitter and see it as the political gambit it truly was.

Jon’s fingers curling about her wrist surprise her. They touch so rarely outside her bedchambers. She looks down at their hands for a moment, noting the ink stain at the knuckle of his middle finger, his short but clean fingernails, his work-roughened skin against the softness of her own. Then she looks at his face, at the painfully soft smile that curves his lips.

“Guess you’re stuck with me, old girl.”

Old girl. He’s never called her that before. He’s never called her anything but Sansa and my lady, or sometimes Lady Stark, a title that gives them both discomfort as Lady Stark is still Sansa’s mother to each of them. Something in Sansa thrills at the strange endearment, though she should – and may – protest at being called such a thing. There’s just something so familiar in the words, in Jon’s soft affection as he says them. Something intimate and real.

“Old girl,” she snorts. “What a contradiction in terms.” On impulse, she twists her hand and twines her fingers with his, sliding them slowly against his to feel the softer skin between his fingers. “I am neither old, nor am I a girl.” Jon ducks his head with a grin, his eyes fixing on their tangled hands. For several long moments he says nothing, only matching the slow, gentle exploration of her fingers. Then, without warning, he tightens his fingers and tugs, pulling her from the edge of the desk into his lap, and this is truly something he’s never done before.

Surprise has Sansa placing both hands flat against his shoulders, her mouth rounded in a silent “oh!” Wide-eyed, she looks at him, just tall enough on his lap that she has to tilt her chin down the tiniest bit, which is strangely appealing somehow. He’s looking at her with the queerest expression, one that’s somehow soft and piercing, soothing and discomfiting, all at once.

“But you’re _my_ girl,” he says, his voice now gone low and rough, “aren’t you.” The words aren’t a question. Still, Sansa answers.

“I’m your wife,” she corrects him. “I am a Lady.”

“True,” he says. “But I think you’re also my girl.” Then, in a gesture bolder than any he’s ever attempted, his lips brush over her ear and then find the hollow beneath, pressing there to make her shiver. “My sweet, lovely girl.”

“Oh,” Sansa breathes, instinctively tipping her head to give him better access. “Um. I suppose I could be amenable to that.” Part of her goggles at what they’re doing – she’s on his _lap_ , in his solar, where anyone could walk in – while part of her wonders at what’s gotten into him that he would do such an unusual thing. The rest of her, _most_ of her, can only marvel at how very good his lips feel on her neck, and how very liquid it makes her feel that he would call her such tender things in such a warm voice.

“Amenable,” he chuckles, the sound vibrating through her skin and making her squirm. “Are we negotiating a contract?”

“Perhaps,” she gasps. She feels as if she teeters on the edge of a precipice, needing only a tiny push to go tumbling down into some new and terrifying and thrilling place. If she let Jon go on, he would probably provide that push. But Sansa decides to do the pushing herself. “Perhaps you could perform a gesture of good faith.”

The suggestion in her voice would be mortifying if Jon hadn’t tipped his head back at her words, his eyes wide and dark and thrillingly hot. Even so, Sansa feels herself blushing, so much so that she’s sure she looks absurd, blotchy red flags standing out on each cheek.

“Good faith…” he echoes, a question in his voice. Primly, Sansa nods, her gaze flicking down to his mouth. He has the prettiest mouth imaginable, one Sansa sometimes envied as a girl. And then, right there in broad daylight, in the middle of his solar at his desk covered with letters and accounts and ledgers, Jon pushes one hand into Sansa’s hair and he kisses her the way she always dreamed of being kissed as a girl, when she still believed in heroes and songs and wedding nights filled with soft laughter and delicious mystery. He kisses her and her mind dissolves into a thousand glittering motes.

They’ve never kissed like this, with no eye for anything other than the kissing itself. Nothing other than the kissing, that is, until Jon seems taken by some uncharacteristic boldness and slides the heel of his palm across her hip and belly to press firmly at the juncture of her thighs.

Sansa breaks away from his kiss with a gasp. She tilts her head back, expecting the feel of his lips on her neck, but instead he stills, and the hand that had been in her lap is suddenly at her chin, gently turning her to face him.

“All right, old girl?” His tone is light, but she can sense the depth of the question in it. The slightest shake of her head would put them right back where they’d been, careful and sweet in the blind darkness of night, joined in something more than a loveless marriage but something less than love.

Instead, Sansa takes his hand and guides it back to where it had been.

Jon’s response is immediate and gratifying; the sound he makes is very nearly primal as he rubs his palm against her, his hand tightening in her skirts when she squeaks in response. Her name is little more than a vibration against the skin of her throat and then it’s his fingers rubbing against her, his long, clever fingers finding that spot that has always hinted at such pleasure during their couplings.

“Oh!” she cries. “Oh, oh, that is… _oh_.”

“You like that, old girl?”

“Oh, do shut up,” she says on a breathy laugh, though she thinks that never again could she hear him call her ‘old girl’ without remembering the painfully sweet pleasure she feels right now.

“What would you have me do instead?” he asks. For a moment, Sansa considers – with as much presence of mind as she can manage, given the way her whole body is trembling on the brink of something wondrous and unthinkable. Then she clambers off his lap to her feet, watching the expression of disappointment that he tries to hide turn into heated desire when she hoists her skirts in her hands and climbs up to straddle him.

“This,” she says. The look on his face when she guides his hand to her smallclothes is one Sansa wouldn’t mind seeing more often.

“Sansa,” he groans.

“Not old girl now, am I?”

“My girl,” he breathes, fingers circling, his other hand spread low on her back. “You’re my girl.” Then he tugs the lace of her smallclothes free and his fingers are on her bare skin and any arch comments or clever quips flee her mind entirely.

It’s entirely unbecoming conduct for a lady to writhe and squirm so in a man’s lap, even if the man beneath her is her husband. Sansa couldn’t possibly gather the wherewithal to care. All she can consider is the heavy pleasure that throbs under his touch, the feather of his breath over her collarbone. His hair tickles her nose, slides soft over her knuckles when she laces her fingers behind his neck, using him for leverage when her peak hits and her entire body stiffens. She’s still jerking with sweet tremors when she sets her forehead to his, whispering, “Now, Jon, please now,” trusting him to know what she asks.

It’s by far the most scandalous way they’ve coupled, a more scandalous way than Sansa really knew existed. His knuckles rub against her sensitive flesh as he unlaces his breeches and then he’s inside her, and it’s as sweet as it had been heady before. He layers her chest and throat with kisses, murmurs endearments that she’s sure will embarrass him afterwards. She’ll hold them to her, though, remembering them through days spent away from him, through nights spent with him inside her. Though perhaps after this, the days might sometimes be more like the nights.

His hand is still on her, still caressing and teasing her up to another crisis. Jon has always made sure she finds her peak before he considers seeking his own; seems that’s true even when she’s climbing the summit a second time. His care for her is enough to tip her into pleasure and she holds his head to her breast as he unleashes himself until he spills within her. Perhaps this time a babe with find purchase, an heir to secure Winterfell for Starks to come. Perhaps, but Sansa is in no hurry. They’ve time enough for all of it.


End file.
